246 



TiMEHRI. 



and may still be, obje6led that the slave on the eve of 

 his liberation was a mere machine, and there is much 

 truth in that assertion, but he was such a machine as 

 conduced to the well-being of the state, his neighbours, 

 family, and himself. Now, inasmuch as he has ceased to 

 remain a working machine, he is an element of weakness, 

 if not danger, to the state, of discomfort to his neigh- 

 bours and the cause of a6lual misery to his feeble depen- 

 dents. In precisely the degree he is relieved of the 

 restraints of his former environment, he sinks into apa- 

 thetic indifference to the claims of manhood and has only 

 to be left alone long enough to reduce him to the condition 

 of his naked, red-rag fetish-worshipping ancestor. 



I have studied him carefully for the last four lustres 

 and I deplore my present convi6lions. It seems as 

 though nature's youngest child in the genus homo can 

 never rise to a worthy state of civilizition without some 

 a6live incentive to progress outside himself. Far be it 

 from me to say that he lacks anything necessary to make 

 good his claim to man and brotherhood : all I say is that 

 these virtues are in a very primary elementary stage ; 

 they are in fa6l only latent, and Nature does not seem to 

 have endowed the son of her old age with the power | 

 which can transform potentiality into reality. 



No conditions of life could afford a field for a fair trial 

 of the negro's power to raise himself to a higher plane 

 of civilization, or to maintain that to which the slave- 

 driver's lash had urged him, better than the lowlands of 

 Guiana. Here, when he became his own master, the 

 country was before him. For a comparatively nominal 

 sum he could procure land unsurpassed for its prolific 

 yields. The climate was exaflly that to which by nature 



